intro
The second speaker, at once the narrator of the whole conversation and the leader of the dialogue proper, is Lamprias,His name is not mentioned until 937 D. There at the beginning of a section which serves as the transition from the main or scientific part of the dialogue to the myth Theon calls Lamprias by name, as Sulla does also at the beginning of his myth (940 F) and at the end of it (945 D). It is probable that in the lost beginning of the work Lamprias was similarly identified. who is also the narrator of the Defectu Oraculorum (cf. 413 D), a dialogue in which he plays the leading role. cf. Flaceliére, Plutarque: Sur la Disparition des Oracles (Paris, 1947), pp. 19-22. In the E apud Delphos, where Lamprias appears with Plutarch, Plutarch calls him brother (385 D); and he is frequently identified as Plutarchs brother in the Quaest. Conviv. (cf. 635 A, 726 D - E, 744 C [with 745 A], and possibly 626 A). He is characterized as a wit and a tease (726 D - E, 740 A), one accustomed to speak out in a loud voice (617 E-F), and capable of inventing a story as evidence to support his argument ( E 386 A); he is an expert in culinary matters (643 E, 669 C, 670 E) and in the dance (747 B) and shrinks from appearing as a kill-joy to younger men (704 E). He is made to emphasize his close relations with a Cynic ( Defectu Oraculorum, 413 B); but he is no Cynic himself, and he is mortified to think that he might be supposed to have used his skill in argument to discredit any pious belief (435 E). He is said to honour the school of Aristotle above that of Epicurus (Quaest Conviv. 635 A - B); but he does not hesitate to disagree with Aristotle in the Defectu Oraculorum (424 C ff.) and to espouse against him the doctrine of the Academy (430 E ff.). In the De Facie he is a vehement critic of Stoic doctrine and a supporter of the Academic position (cf 922 F). Lamprias bore the name of his grandfather; but this does not prove, as has sometimes been asserted, that he was older than his brothers, Plutarch and Timon. Defectu Oraculorum, 431 C - D, has been thought to show that he was a priest of the oracle in Lebadeia,Hirzel, r Dialog, ii, p. 189, n. 3; Flaceliére, Op. cit. p. 251, n. 233; Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 10. though this is not a necessary implication of that passage; and a Delphic inscription proves him to have been an archon at Delphi towards the end of Trajan’s reign or in the beginning of Hadrian’s. Dittenberger, S. I. G. ii. 868 C, n. 6; Stein, R. E. xii. 1. 586, s.v. Λαμπρίας 4.
